Microsoft made a mistake.
Not the first time, and not something that will cripple them, but it’s a mistake nonetheless. I don’t buy into the whole “you are the controller” thing. I know some people are going bat crazy over the whole thing, but I will not submit. I actually stopped by to see the guys waiting in line the day before launch.
Truthfully, I wasn’t at the Toys-R-us in Times Square for these guys, I was out shopping with my family and upon seeing the line I remembered that Microsoft was seriously launching this thing. Had no idea it would be here though rather than one of those Microsoft stores they previously opened up. I felt bad for these guys too because they seemed to be the type of guys you would see lining up for a Gears of War midnight launch rather than getting in line to play Kinectamals.
Nintendo ruined it for these guys.
I think Microsoft was hoping that this was 2005-2006 and they could just provide ‘potential’ and that would be enough of a selling point for some people, but it certainly is not for me. If I hadn’t been fooled by the Nintendo Wii and its potential, I may have thought to give this thing a chance. But a singly Zelda, Conduit, and Wii motion plus later and I’m not falling for anymore crap like this ever again. I initially enjoyed the Wiimote because I re-assured myself that devs would catch on and start developing AAA titles for the Wii. I was a poor deluded fool for thinking that publishers were going to commit their AAA devs to make a Wii title unless Nintendo bankrolled the game themselves like Team Ninja with ‘Metroid other M’. It never happened and at this point never will. We’ll never see Rockstar, SquareEnix, Bioware or a number of companies making Wii games and I get the idea that they probably aren’t too interested in this Kinect either.
The small number of launch games
The launch games are dismal. 3 games? Natal was announced over a year ago which, in my opinion, provided enough time to even ‘tack-on’ some motion controls to previously released games, but this obviously didn’t happen to any AAA games. Playstation Move got RE5 Gold, but nothing comparable for the Xbox360 with Kinect. Instead there’s some Kinect sports and rafting and not much else.
I saw this poor crowd of people waiting for days to get their hands on the peripheral, but I honestly could not believe that these people stood in line for 2 days to have the opportunity to finally go home exhausted and stand and play some games. Seriously?
The games look boring.
Why do i want to jump up and down in some ridiculous rhythm and have to pay for it? There’s kids on the corner of ‘Anytown USA’ playing hopscotch and jump rope in the same manner, so why pay $150 in addition to whatever was already invested in the HDTV and console itself. The games don’t even inspire me to run out the door and buy one, instead they seem like imitation Nintendo games gone wrong. They don’t give me the impression that they are engrossing or help introduce an experience that I would appreciate for half the money that they’re selling this thing for, and they must realize that their peripheral isn’t only competing with PS Move and the Wii, but also their own lineup of games for 360. Why buy this instead of Call of Duty and Halo for the same amount of money?
In short, MS obviously went the ‘Mii Too” route with introducing this thing to us, now they have to put some effort to make it attractive for those of us who aren’t interested in controlling our system by voice and hand gestures. Heck, some people still prefer a mouse and keyboard guys.
gonna take a lot of convincing to change my mind…
